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Thread: Domains being seized by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Special Agent. And seized by ICE - Homeland Security Investigations in Charge

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    Domains being seized by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Special Agent. And seized by ICE - Homeland Security Investigations in Charge

    The US Federal Government has started seizing websites which sell, market, or promote copyrighted or trademarked goods and services (otherwise known as piracy marketeers).

    Nearly 100 sites today have been seized. If you go to one of these sites, their home page will show the following:



    Also, in the United States, a new law proposal called The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) was introduced in November. This law will allow the government, under the command of the media companies, to censor the internet as they see fit, like China and Iran do, with the difference that the sites they decide to censor will be completely removed from the internet and not just in the US.

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    Examples of sites already seized:
    http://filespump.com/index.html
    www.timberlandlike.com
    www.dvdsetsonline.com/
    www.handbagspop.com

    Visitors to the affected sites--which offer such diverse goods as scarves, golfing gear and rap music--are greeted with a notice stating their domain names have been seized by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The notice cites penalties for willful copyright infringement and trafficking in counterfeit goods.

    An ICE spokeswoman confirmed that the agency executed court-ordered seizure warrants against a number of domain names, but declined additional comment. "As this is an ongoing investigation...

    Online publications, including TorrentFreak, first reported the seizures which began on Thursday when ICE agents raided facilities operated by a hip hop file-sharing site called RapGodFathers. Other seized sites that share music or sell goods include torrent-finder.com, timberlandlike.com, dvdsetsonline.com and handbagspop.com.

    Some of the siteowners have reportedly complained that their domain names were seized without any notice or warning.

    The seizures come as Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., vows to block an online copyright enforcement bill that was unanimously approved last week by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

    The bill would allow the Justice Department to seek expedited court orders blacklisting websites suspected of piracy.

    Supporters say the bill will help put an end to websites, some of them foreign-owned, that steal intellectual property, which is estimated to cost the U.S. economy more than $100 billion every year and results in the loss of thousands of jobs.

    "The Internet serves as the glue of international commerce in today's global economy. But it's also been turned into a tool for online thieves to sell counterfeit and pirated goods, making hundreds of millions of dollars off of stolen American intellectual property," Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said in a written statement.

    Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the chairman of the committee, said if "rogue websites" existed in the physical world, the store would be shuttered immediately and the proprietors would be arrested.

    "We cannot excuse the behavior because it happens online and the owners operate overseas," he said in a written statement. "The Internet needs to be free – not lawless."
    But Wyden says the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, or COICA, is excessive.

    "Deploying this statue to combat online copyright infringement seems almost like using a bunker-busting cluster bomb, when what you need is a precision-guided missile," he said during a hearing on digital trade. "If you don't think this thing through carefully, the collateral damage would be American innovation, American jobs, and a secure Internet."

    Wyden's opposition dooms the bill in this Congress and would force the next Congress convening in January to start from scratch.

    The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based digital rights group, also opposes the bill, saying the collateral damage would be "enormous." The group said if the bill had passed a few years ago, YouTube might not exist today.

    "There are already laws and procedures in place for taking down sites that violate the law," the group said in a statement on its website. "This act would allow the attorney general to censor sites even when no court has found they have infringed copyright or any other law."

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    Re: Domains being seized by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Special Agent. And seized by ICE - Homeland Security Investigations in Charge

    Many of us private investigators and members of the International Private Investigators Union have had thousands of undercover cases offered to us for anti-piracy. The last few assignments this month (which are typically posted in the IPIU Jobs site, have earned some IPIU members from $100 to $2000 per HOUR. Piracy cases have been earning us a good income for the last ten years, and it appears the US Government is going after other forms of piracy.

    If you are not yet a full member of IPIU, call the office at 406-534-0251 or 800-548-1526 and inquire about piracy cases.


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